I see the point they are making, yet Microsoft is everywhere in big business, college, and government. In grad school, every computer was a Dell operating on Microsoft platform using Windows software. Very few had a mac. Here where I work, everyone uses a Dell operating on a microsoft platform using Windows. When I go home to visit family, I hear about the latest Xbox360 game, the new Halo release or Assassins Creed. In fact, I'll be getting an Xbox 360 before Christmas and I don't even have cable, but I do enjoy Halo. So, with all of the purchasing of and use of Microsoft products, how are they not going to survive the century? The fact that viruses and malware are designed to infiltrate windows operating systems becuase that operating platform has the majority of the market share tells me that in order for Microsoft to not survive this century, the majority of us will have to use something esle. Do the masses really beleive that Apple or google will replace windows products? They just seem to be ubiquitous in our daily lives. In fact, so are Dell computers. Their usage in government and higher education suggest a symbiotic relationship where if one goes down, the other will too.

I was thinking of picking up some shares of MSFT in the near future and so any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

To say "this century" alone is a tad absurd. Look where we were last century, hell, alone last decade? The iPod was not yet released, the Mac was not yet cool, Google was only a budding search company, Facebook was not even conceived of yet, and Microsoft was the king of the computing roost. Remember when we used to speak about "Wintel"?

Microsoft may not make all through this century, but most likely neither will Apple or Google or almost any other tech company right now. I'm pretty sure the "it" high-tech companies in 10 years time will include names you have yet to hear of.

But Microsoft has a place, and it also has the cash to invest here and there until they hit another home-run.

MSFT is too big to move, AAPL and GOOG are stealing market share (however little). The dividend is tiny for such tremendous cash flow, the stock performance versus nearly every metric stinks. I believe MSFT will continue to trade in a range over the years, or grow a tiny bit, but still underperform the averages.

As companies get bigger they are much more inefficient with the amount of bureaucracy involved in them. For their industry they need to be lean and mean. I don’t see them surviving when they can’t even come up with a competitive smart phone device. Increasing amounts of the corporate market are adopting the to macs to compliment their iphones and ipods. I’m surprised they have lasted as long as they have.